


this shaking keeps me steady

by likeoatmeal



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 09:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1220470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeoatmeal/pseuds/likeoatmeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer sun bleeds the world of color. It blankets everything in a thick cloak of humidity and leaves the sky a shade of blue reminiscent of acid washed denim. </p>
<p>There is a diploma on Blaine’s desk from William McKinley High School, a red polyester graduation robe he’ll never wear again hangs at the back of his closet.</p>
<p>Already, the sparkle of graduating has grown cloudy in the summer heat. With New York City looming on the horizon line, Ohio is stifling in ways it has never been before. Most days it feels like time’s slowed to a snail’s pace under the wet-warm glare of June, like it’s stopped completely and left him stuck in place.</p>
<p>- </p>
<p>AU wherein Blaine transferred to McKinley but was still a senior. Written the summer after S2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this shaking keeps me steady

The summer sun bleeds the world of color. It blankets everything in a thick cloak of humidity and leaves the sky a shade of blue reminiscent of acid washed denim.

 

There is a diploma on Blaine’s desk from William McKinley High School, a red polyester graduation robe he’ll never wear again hangs at the back of his closet.

 

Already, the sparkle of graduating has grown cloudy in the summer heat. With New York City looming on the horizon line, Ohio is stifling in ways it has never been before. Most days it feels like time’s slowed to a snail’s pace under the wet-warm glare of June, like it’s stopped completely and left him stuck in place.

 

-

 

At home his parents have too many serious conversations about his life that don’t include him. His mother eyes him worriedly over deep-welled glasses of merlot, like she’s waiting for him to ask for a do over. His father’s glances are perfunctory at best and so normal they make the ever-tender parts of Blaine’s heart hurt. Over coffee Kurt frowns at Blaine’s dismissive shrugs, _this is how it is_ , and the end is so close, _I don’t want to rock the boat_. His father has always preferred silence to confrontation.   

 

Blaine fills the quiet left in the wake of all those conversations he isn’t a part of with music, just as he always has.

 

Dalton taught him how to navigate the minefield of words skillfully enough, but Blaine lacks any sense of intuition to make something of them for himself. For Blaine, words are messy and complicated; words require smoothing and shaping to fit his needs. Blaine has practiced countless loops of words inside his head that never seem to convey with precision what he means. They leave too much room for misinterpretation and Blaine’s attempts to fill those gaps leave him with fistfuls of words, squeezed too tight, limp and lifeless.

 

Compared to words, music is a brass compass in Blaine’s hand, and when he sings, it feels like the greatest truth he’ll ever share. Like he can make anyone listen, like they’ll want to listen. He leaves his parents to discuss his life and takes to fiddling with the keys of the piano in this mother’s office, works them until he’s discovered a melody that best sounds like waiting.

 

-

 

Blaine never writes a song for New Directions to perform. It’s not the same as saying Blaine never writes a song. Singing in New Directions is akin to flaying open your rib cage and putting on display the beating heart inside. For all that Blaine can do that, and so it well, and for all the pride he feels whenever Rachel stands in front of them and shares something she’s written, he’s never been able to follow her example. Not because he lacks the inspiration or even the work, but because there’s very little in the way of lyrics on the countless music sheets Blaine’s collected throughout the year. He cannot picture himself sitting at the piano in the choir room and trying to explain the meaning of a melody that’s so clear to him.

 

A bombastic, heavy rhythm for his father. A soft, well-intended harmony for his mother. Something quick and just on the brink of disjointed for the club itself.

 

And then there’s Kurt. Blaine has composed a dozen songs and more for Kurt.

 

Blaine’s written an aria for the curve of Kurt’s back, the ascending rungs of his spine and the long-fingered hand that covers his mouth when he laughs.  A chorus for the careful spread of his rib cage and the red heart it protects, a bridge for the soft hollows behind his knees and the expanding crush of Blaine’s heart behind his own lungs the sight of them inspires.

 

He’s penned a refrain for the ticklish spot on the inside of Kurt’s left arm and a hymn for the constellations of freckles on his shoulders.

 

No, Blaine can never imagine sharing those.

 

-

 

Kurt goes to work in his father’s garage again. Blaine gets a short-lived job in King’s Island’s summer show before hearing back from the Wexner Center for the Arts and taking a job as an assistant counselor in their summer program. He spends four days a week teaching middle school students triad chords and dissonance. He tells them that music is a different way of being in the world and knows that some of them understand what he means by it. (He tells Kurt during their nightly phone call and can practically see him rolling his eyes over the line. “Get any cheesier someone’s going to try to spread you on a cracker.” But Kurt knows, Blaine knows he does, Kurt knows what music can be.)

 

On Thursdays after work he meets with Kurt in the Lima Bean, hums along with the station playing through the speakers.

 

_Before you came into my life I missed you so bad_.

 

Despite Kurt’s constant consternation, Blaine is still very familiar with the revolving door of top forty singles streaming through the air waves, a habit he has never been able to shed despite the New Directions’ tendency to hop from genre and era on a whim. He taps the song out across his boyfriend’s knuckles, knocks their ankles together when he bounces his foot to the merciless, ear catching tune of the song. “You’re impossible,” Kurt teases between sips of iced coffee but he leaves his hand where it is.

 

In the car Kurt fiddles with Blaine’s i-pod, mocks his compulsive need to make playlists. Still his mouth goes soft when he sees the newest addition (not new at all really but rather an amalgamation of a half-dozen predecessors, all united during languid morning hours when he realized they were all facets of the same thing): _Kurt Songs_.

 

“You’re a sap.” Kurt says, but he clicks play anyway and the car fills with the whimsical love affair of piano notes, the coy back and forth of harmonizing voices. Blaine does not take his eyes off the road, but he appreciates the irony of the song when the world outside the car has reached 80 degrees already—and it won’t be the hottest day this week, all the weather forecast warn—and makes a remark about the magic of Christmas.

 

-

 

Kurt works on another musical that summer, in commemoration of Alexander McQueen. He has an entire binder dedicated to set designs and costumes, elaborate creations that make Blaine’s eyes swim, full of colors and textures and surprises. Blaine thinks some of the things in that binder could upstage even a McQueen original, but his opinion would probably be paramount to treason, so he keeps it to himself. Instead he gives feedback when Kurt asks for it, makes suggestions for the reprise at the end of the second act, plays some of the more completed pieces on the old piano that belonged to Kurt’s mother, their fingers working together across the ivory keys.

 

They did this once, the week Mr. Schuester assigned duets as an assignment. They played side by side and in perfect harmony, their voices rising and falling, one after the other until they hit the chorus together. (Mr. Schuester had warned them they wouldn’t always get to sing together and Blaine had to swallow the urge to tell them they would. He knows that.)

 

Blaine helps Kurt in any way that he can, even stands perfectly still while Kurt kneels with pins between his lips and cuffs the sleeves of a jacket he drew up and pieced together out of heavy green tartan that reminds Blaine of the kilt that hangs in Kurt’s closet. (They didn’t go to prom this year. Blaine had brought Kurt a boutonnière anyway, and Kurt had gone the same startled shade of pink as the peony in Blaine’s hands when Blaine had pinned it on his shirt. They’d baked enough cookies to feed a metropolitan city and then spent the night in Kurt’s bedroom watching movies, a peony on Kurt’s chest and his hand tight in Blaine’s. It wasn’t fear that kept either of them away, but you don’t have to be afraid to be tired, every single day an act of resistance, of defiance, of being-the-bigger-better-person, the responsibility of it all overwhelming. So instead they stay home and sneak chocolate chips while the cookies bake and keep a night to themselves.)

 

There are half a dozen weeks left between them and New York and new beginnings and for all the excitement that practically radiates off Kurt’s skin, there’s nervousness there too. Kurt likens it to those moments before taking the stage, jittery and eager all at once. “Like my heart’s a hummingbird on speed and it’s about to explode.” Kurt slips the last pin into the jacket cuff, glances up at Blaine through his eyelashes. “Good thing I’ve got you to distract me.”

 

Blaine remembers waiting in the wings at Nationals, taking Kurt’s face in his hands and kissing him (“For luck?” Kurt breathed and Blaine shook his head and said, “Because I love you. We don’t need luck.” and meant every word of it), and he kisses him now because it’s all still true, even at the risk of a pin digging into his wrist.

 

“Good thing.”

 

-

 

June turns to July and time slows to a full stop. Daylight seems to go on forever and they spend early evenings in the Hummel-Hudson backyard, exchanging work day stories while watching the sky go from pale blue to blushing shades of quartz that seem to take hours to bruise darker into nightfall.

 

Sometimes Finn finds them spread out across the grass on an old blanket—Blaine talking about that one kid in his class who keeps eating the music sheets or Kurt recounting all the ways customers fail to grasp the meaning of car maintenance — and he joins them. Some nights he brings out his guitar, cradles it in his lap and might even be persuaded with a request. Finn’s better at the bang and clatter of percussion, but he’s decent with a guitar, even if he does draw the line at attempting to play anything ever sung by Celine Dion.

 

Blaine, back warm with receding sunlight and his belly pressed to the earth, watches Finn’s fingers work through the motions of whatever song Kurt has solicited out of him tonight. There’s a ricocheting twang that stirs his sun stroked memory but it isn’t until Kurt starts singing along “ _Oh I hate you summer, I hate you summer_ ,” that recognition slips into its proper place and he laughs into his forearm.

 

“I don’t think those are the words.” He says, too warm still to ask for the story of how exactly Finn ever learned to play this song, but Kurt just shrugs, one pale hand rising up to shield his eyes even though there’s not enough sun left overhead to keep out of them, “Joni would understand my need to take artistic liberties.” Blaine understands well enough. The heat leaves him feeling heavy and lazy, blushes his skin pink before it darkens, fits him with tan lines Kurt tsks smugly at whenever he strips Blaine of his shirt (which isn’t as often as Blaine would like but there has always been the idea of later to hold Blaine over and now, now, now, it feels like later is almost here and it makes his whole body buzz).

 

Finn drops out of the song before Kurt can hit his stride, fumbles around the strings until he’s switched to the chorus of _Peace Frogs_. Kurt sighs but he doesn’t protest. The ghost of last summer lingers over them, that proverbial pink elephant that sits next to Finn at the edge of their blanket in the place where Rachel used to sit.

 

There was a time, months ago, winter draped heavy on their shoulders in the collected weight of scarves and coats and endless sweaters, when New York was the promise of four people finding their stride together. The choir room went silent for a long week in March when that ceased to be true and even now none of them know how to talk about it.

 

Blaine rolls onto his back, knocks his elbow into Kurt’s side and earns a half-hearted glare for his trouble. Blaine wonders if maybe Finn isn’t the smartest one of them all for deciding not to go. Finn with his lumbering frame and endless good intentions knows himself well enough to know he won’t find his place in New York. Who’s to say that Finn doesn’t already know some heart rendering truth the rest of them will have to learn a harder way.

 

Blaine reaches for Kurt’s hand because its too hot for anything else, the air still clings too closely to their skin and chafes like cheap wool, but Kurt allows him to press their sweat damp palms together, makes a loosely tangled mess of their fingers in response.  

 

Finn gives up playing after a little while, stretches out besides Kurt, feet sprouting over the edges of the blanket and into the grass. They talk about Carole’s birthday and appropriate gifts (or rather, Kurt talks about appropriate gifts, Finn makes noncommittal noises and Blaine listens) and watch the sky go an inky shade of blue as the sun continues its retreats.

 

-

 

Blaine repays the countless hours he spends in Kurt’s home by inviting him into the lion’s den.

 

“Sweetie we need to wean you off the hyperbole.” Kurt laughs, smoothing his hands over Blaine’s shoulders, thumbs pressing down until some of the tension falls away. “It’s just dinner.”

 

But it’s not. It wasn’t just dinner the first time Kurt sat at their dinner table, peering at Blaine around the overly elaborate floral arrangement his mother had purchased just for the occasion, glancing away to make perfect eye contact with his parents as they inquired about school and his family and glee club. And it certainly wasn’t just dinner when the Andersons and the Hummel-Hudson family went out after graduation, his parents overly polite and, beneath that thin veil, outright uncomfortable whenever New York was mentioned.

 

This will just be dinner the same way a root canal is _just_ a dental procedure.

 

He wants Kurt to say no, wants to be informed of some prior engagement—a sleepover at Rachel’s, or a shopping date with Mercedes or some familial obligation he’ll call Blaine later to tell all about—but there’s nothing except Kurt’s painfully reassuring eyes and the tilt of his mouth when he asks if there’s anything he should bring.

 

Dinner is a carefully choreographed dance of utensils and good manners. His mother makes duck and Kurt brings a pie and the conversation circles around the oncoming heat wave and his mother’s garden. And then his father asks about Kurt’s living situation for the upcoming year and Blaine’s insides flinch. Something in Kurt’s expression tightens and Blaine prays to every benign force at work in the universe that the night won’t end with him jumping across the table to stand between his boyfriend and his father. He can picture it all too clearly in his mind.  

 

To call the subject a sore spot would be an understatement, even now months after their initial fight—because it had been a fight, their collective maturity disintegrated and discarded until they were shouting in Kurt’s bedroom and Blaine stormed out of the house without a goodbye. They try to make a joke out of it now, how spectacularly they failed at keeping it together after everything else they handled, but deciding which schools they would go to wasn’t nearly as disastrous as Blaine telling Kurt that his parents had mailed a check to student housing. Kurt ignored all of Blaine’s desires to ignore any and all possible ulterior motives behind the gesture when he asked Blaine how long he was going to let his parents control his life.  “They’re not—I don’t know why you’re so upset. Weren’t we considering this? Not rushing into things.”

 

“Please Blaine, there’s a difference between not rushing into something and stalling.”

 

 “I’m not stalling. My parents aren’t controlling anything—”

 

 “Really? Then what happens next year and the year after that? Did you _even_ mention wanting to live with me? Do you even want to live with _me?_ ” 

 

The memory of the argument presses down on Blaine’s diaphragm and he tightens his fingers around his fork.

 

 He doesn’t know whether his father’s being willfully oblivious or if he genuinely doesn’t know the reason his son moped around the house for four days. Blaine’s willing to believe it’s the former, the same way he’s willing to believe his parents honestly weren’t thinking anything when they paid for housing. Because despite everything Kurt accused them of; Blaine honestly doesn’t resent his parents for doing what they did. As much as he wants to spend as much time as possible with his boyfriend the reality of what they’re doing, what they’re attempting to do, weighs heavily on his mind. He worries about what would happen if Kurt ever got tired of him; about the nightmare of it all being too much too soon and what would have to happen then (New York is bigger and brighter than Lima, Ohio could ever hope to be and they won’t be alone. Blaine won’t be Kurt’s only option—“You’re not, you could never be—God do you think I just—wait did you _settle_ for me?”—the _what if_ of it all hangs over his head and he knows there’ll need to be somewhere to retreat to if it all falls to pieces. Though if that day ever comes, Blaine won’t be meeting it without having fought his hardest to keep it at bay).

 

Kurt answers with pointed civility, talks about the expenses of university housing, “But Rachel and I have talked it over with our parents so we think we can manage paying rent on a place of our own. Honestly though,” Kurt meets Blaine’s eyes and his smile thaws from sociable to hopeful, “we’re willing to take in another roommate.”

 

There’s no missing Kurt’s implication and Blaine’s mother clears her throat. Warmth lances beneath Blaine’s skin until he’s positive he’s gone red but Kurt just smiles wider around his next bite **.** Dessert is blessedly uneventful after that.

 

It’s not until they’re standing in the foyer saying goodnight before Blaine escorts Kurt to his car for a goodbye all their own that awkwardness rears its head again.

 

“We should do this again,” his mother says, ever the courteous hostess, while his father nods agreeably. “Before you boys leave for school.”

 

“Definitely,” Kurt answers, titling his head to the side and then clapping his hands together. “Especially since we won’t have another opportunity until Christmas.” There’s something flippant to his mother’s smile when she agrees and she kisses Kurt on the check before Blaine takes him by the wrist and leads the way to his car.

 

“Christmas?” Blaine asks outside, leaning them both into the driver’s side door and out of his parents’ line of sight.

 

The corner of Kurt’s mouth curls into a pleased grin, “Well, we’re thinking of visiting the Hudson side of the family for Thanksgiving this year.”

 

Blaine reaches for him, hands curling over Kurt’s elbows, “So, Christmas.”

 

Kurt holds his hands up, mimics the curve of Blaine’s ribs with his fingers and palms. There’s nothing unsteady in Kurt’s gaze before he ducks his head to kiss Blaine, soft and familiar, but then, there never is. That’s just who Kurt is. Focused and sure and unshakable.

 

It steadies something in Blaine, that nervous flutter at the back of his mind defenseless in the face of this beautiful boy who calls Blaine his own.

 

The street lights blink to life overhead while Blaine watches Kurt drive away, imagines doing this again in five months, coat drawn close and the air gone sharp with snow. He imagines his parents’ dinner table and their faces, Kurt’s face, in five months, in twelve, again and again.

 

-

 

July turns into August and the first week gives them thunderclouds the color of wet cement, provides a break from the relentless sunlight though not necessarily from the heat. Brittney worries about tornadoes blowing her house away, “I don’t need new shoes.” She tells Blaine calmly, jumping up and down besides him on the trampoline in her backyard. Blaine doesn’t know her as well as he does some of the other members, knows her mostly through the grapevine of information whispered around the choir room. He knows her best in the quick, sharp movements of a dance routine, the frankness of her words in important situations. He remembers her pinkie finger clasped tight in Santana’s for weeks on end and then not at all, their bodies separated by the width of the choir room, Santana’s too bright smile when she told Blaine she was fine.

 

The wind blows warm through the safety netting that encircles them and Blaine bounces up and spins, misses the landing and flops on his ass. Brittney jumps high and tucks her limbs close, cannonballs down besides Blaine, laughing the whole while. It’s nice to see her smile again.

 

The backyard’s been emptying out since the sky turned threatening. Kurt left the trampoline once Mercedes felt the first drop fall, landing after an impressive mid-air split and responding to Blaine’s pleas that he stay a little while longer with, “Three words: Yves Saint Laurent.” Now it’s just Blaine and Brittney on the trampoline, mostly ignored by Mike and Tina, who are sharing a lawn chair and talking in low voices.

 

When the rain does start, it does so suddenly. The sky opens in a pelting downpour that brings Blaine’s hair down into his eyes as they slip across the grass into the Pierces’ kitchen. They burst in on Santana and Puckerman pouring Sunny D and vodka into a row of plastic cups. “Alright, kiddies we’re taking this mother up to eleven.” Puckerman says, passing a cup off to Blaine.

 

It’s one last New Directions hurrah, though no one calls it that. Blaine sits on the plastic covered carpet between Kurt’s feet while his boyfriend rubs a kitchen towel through his hair, nursing his drink and just taking in everything around him. Some days Blaine wonders what it might have been like to have had more time at McKinley, more time with these people Kurt calls family. Blaine doesn’t regret leaving Dalton but the truth is that most days in that choir room Blaine still felt like an outsider looking in, a stranger in an even stranger land trying to make sense of the natives.  

 

Santana’s refilling cups for a third time when the singing starts. There’s no stage in Brittney’s living room, just a lumpy plastic covered couch (“Lord Tubbington throws up a lot. I think he might be bubonic.”) that Finn and Puck and Sam push back against the wall to clear up floor space. They sing through old assignments and random favorites. The Spice Girls come up on shuffle on whoever’s i-pod is playing and Lauren and Quinn shout their way through Wannabe. Blaine serenades Kurt with Selena Gomez, hops up onto Brittany’s coffee table dances clumsily for no other reason than to watch him laugh while Blaine tells him he loves him like a love song.

 

When Single Ladies starts playing Puck turns on Kurt, who’s been watching the spectacle from the safety of the couch, “C’mon Hummel you’ve got to own this shit.” And then Tina’s bouncing up behind Kurt, two hands on his hips, moving them to the music.

 

Kurt’s skin is flushed, pink behind the dozens of freckles drawn out by so much sunlight, and he’s shaking his head even as his body falls into motion, a mixture of the original Beyonce and what amounts to a lot gyrating hips. It seems like everyone who ever wore a McKinley football jersey knows the steps to some degree, and there’s a story there, Blaine knows there is. He could ask and have it happily retold (and probably not a little embellished) but for now he’s content to be pulled into the crowd of dancing bodies, tries his best to keep up. Kurt’s face is bright; sweat gathering at his hairline and along his upper lip. He huffs an impatient laugh when Blaine presses close to him, arms going around his waist and completely ruining the chorography. “You’re amazing.” Blaine says, light headed and soft-tongued with alcohol, amazement shooting through his nervous system like an electric shock. Kurt just laughs again, reaches up and musses Blaine’s ruined hair. “You’re drunk.”

 

“Probably. A little.” Blaine steals a kiss even though Kurt hates being kissed mid-response, insists its cheating. But Blaine doesn’t think there’s anything fairer in all the world than kissing Kurt Hummel. He tells him that and earns a look colored with equal parts amusement and confusion. Then he kisses Blaine anyway.

 

 “I’m up on him he up on me…”Santana sings at them with a tawdry shimmy, her skintight bandage dress plunging just a little lower at the neckline when she leans forward.  Kurt pulls back to say something in French that ends with “diable”.

 

Santana’s laugh is a sharp sound, like it has been for so much of the past year. What he’s learned, what he’s still learning, is that you can’t fix the world, can’t make it better for everyone, but that some days it’s enough to listen, to be there through the mess. He’s learning that bravery can as simple as admitting a truth to yourself even if it’s not to the whole world.

 

Blaine reaches out for her and spins her sloppily until her she’s smiling carelessly, her laughter clearer and lighter in the clamor of the music. She catches them off guard and sends them staggering sideways when she throws herself at them, one arm tight around Blaine’s neck. Kurt squawks and Santana’s hand squeezes Blaine’s shoulder. “Imma miss you, Dorothy. You too Toto.”

 

That’s how Blaine finds himself at the center of a New Directions group hug, one arm around Santana’s back and one hand clutching at the back of Kurt’s shirt, wrinkles be damned. Everyone else piles on until he’s not sure who’s touching what and everyone’s a little too drunk to care.

 

-

 

He wakes up in a bathtub with Brittney’s cat stretched across his chest. His head throbs and his neck pulls painfully when he tries to stretch. His mouth tastes horrible. He scratches between Lord Tubbington’s ears and when he purrs the vibrations play across Blaine’s ribs and reverberate throughout his chest. For a moment his internal organs seize in protest. He sits up despite Lord Tubbington’s unhappy mewl, and he breathes deep until it doesn’t feel like his stomach is trying to wiggle its way up his throat.

 

The bathroom door is ajar and in the hallway he can hear the murmur of conversation down the hall. The living room is a mess of rearranged furniture and empty cups. Tina is still dead to the world; half her limbs dangling from the sofa, Mike’s cardigan wrinkled around her waist.  Puckerman and Finn take up most of the floor, Puck with a lampshade over his face and his left shoe missing. Picking his way through them requires more care and attention than Blaine is capable of at the moment. He reminds himself to apologize to Finn later for stepping on his arm. Not that it wakes him.

 

He finds the rest of them in the kitchen, sitting at Brittney’s table with cups of instant coffee. Mike’s face is resting on a mug with a giant B painted on it like it’s the only thing holding it up. There’s a box of strawberry Pop-tarts on the counter and the smell of warm sugar wafts from the toaster. Through the windows Blaine can see the rain has calmed to a foggy drizzle and the sky’s gone a pale clear grey. Artie drowsily asks if he can get dog hair for a bite.

 

“You’re covered in cat hair.” Kurt says weakly.  Blaine wonders where Kurt slept and how he ended up in the bathtub with a cat but then Kurt’s passing him a Hello Kitty mug and Quinn’s setting a plate of warmed Pop-tarts in the middle of the table.

 

“The things I do with you people.” Kurt says, though not unkindly, mostly bemused and a little bit exhausted. He doesn’t protest when Blaine takes one and breaks it in half, the jam filling scalding against his skin. Kurt leans forward and blows across his fingers, takes a bite of the half Blaine offers him before taking it from Blaine’s hand.

 

“Drinking a bottle of Grey Goose didn’t make me want to hurl as bad as this.” Santana mutters darkly across the table. Blaine watches her eyes stray to Brittney and there’s a flash of regret he hopes will one day go away. Kurt’s knee bumps into his beneath the table and Blaine’s gratitude is so strong it almost outweighs the guilt that comes from having what he wants.

 

-

 

Four hours later they leave Brittney’s living room mostly in order (though Puck never does find his shoe) and stumble back to their respective cars with promises to hang out again before the fall takes them away. Mike to Michigan and Santana to L.A., Mercedes to Columbus, and Quinn to Connecticut. Rachel and Kurt and Blaine to New York.

 

Then they drive away. In the car Kurt allows Blaine the privilege of selecting the music. Blaine scrolls his way through Kurt’s music, still mostly bemused by the alternating red and electric blue nail polish he woke up wearing (it had taken two Pop-tarts and four cups of coffee for him to even notice. He has vague recollections of happily offering Brittney his hand sometime last night while Rachel and Kurt sang _I See the Light_ ). “You can take the boy out of Dalton,” Kurt’s mouth was steady but his eyes were brimming with laughter when he said it. Blaine had just fanned his fingers out and resolved to take a picture to send to Nick and the others.

 

He switches from albums to Kurt’s playlists, which aren’t nearly as numerous as Blaine’s but much more meticulous complied. He doesn’t have to scroll down before he stops, smile pulling on his mouth until he has to relinquish his whole face over to it. “You made me a playlist.”

 

Kurt slows at a stop sign and glances over at him, quick, before he releases the car forward. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve made you plenty of playlists.” It’s true. Blaine has a drawer full of jewel-toned CD cases containing plain faced CDs covered in Kurt’s loose handwriting. But those were for Blaine, music that Kurt thought he should have, that he wanted to share with him. This is different. This is music Kurt keeps for himself that reminds him of Blaine, the corresponding piece to the list Blaine keeps like a secret from everyone. Except from Kurt.

 

He looks through it carefully, studies the songs Kurt’s put aside just for him before he can know which one to select.

 

Kurt laughs a little at his song choice, but his profile is a study in happiness Blaine thinks when he looks at him. The song slowly slides them from the summer into the dark cool heart of winter. “Out of everything on there?” 

 

“It’s my favorite.”

 

Kurt licks his bottom lip and smiles, presses his lips together and taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Mine too.”

 

The vocals never arrive but they have no problem providing them, trading lyrics with all the playful ease of before. _How can you do this thing to me?_ Blaine implores, holding his clasped hands out to Kurt whose eyes are fixed on the road but he’s smiling regardless, like he doesn’t have to look to know Blaine is making a fool off himself and love him for it.

 

“I really can’t stay.” Kurt sings, voice strong and high and beautiful. And Blaine knows, Blaine knows in his gut, certainty so strong he wants to stop everything else in the world so that nothing will ever touch this moment. Blaine loves him, on this balmy July day in Ohio, tomorrow in New York City, and all the days that come after where ever they find them.

 

He sings the next line. Kurt answers.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story after season 2 on the high that came from hearing Kurt tell Rachel that Blaine was on board going to NYC. Oh those were the days kids! I've been working on it on and off ever since because I never had the heart to scrap it all together after juniorgate and the downward spiral that was, for me, S3 and S4. So the characters here, especially the character of Blaine and his relationship with Kurt, are based heavily on who we knew them as in season 2 (which is perhaps why BICO features so heavily). Which wasn't a whole lot but I do feel like there are aspects of his character as seen then that are still there now and are present in this fic. The title is from the poem The Waking by Theodore Roethke. I hope you enjoyed reading this, I certainly enjoyed writing it. Thank you!


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